Port of Los Angeles

The Port of Los Angeles is the busiest container port in the United States and together with the Port of Long Beach makes Southern California the largest gateway for U.S. imports. The port's seven container terminals are served by BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad. It is the primary destination for imports from Asia bound for the populous consumer markets of the Midwest.

The PierPass extended gates program at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, which has moved vast quantities of cargo from daytime to nights and weekends, has come under no shortage of criticism in recent months.

The Port of Los Angeles has launched a supplemental environmental impact review of the China Shipping Container Line terminal to determine if some of the ambitious pollution-reduction measures in the earlier EIR should be revisited and possibly revised given the state of technology, and the already significant achievements in reducing pollution at the largest U.S. port.

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed a bill that will enhance the ability of ports to secure additional bond revenue for infrastructure and environmental projects. This will make it easier for Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland, three of the six largest U.S. container ports, to be more competitive through freight infrastructure development.

Container volumes handled by West Coast ports are returning to historical levels, but the weekly manpower requirements for handling the containers is about 15 percent higher than in the past. That suggests terminal operators are struggling to adjust to the complexities caused by mega-ships, vessel-sharing alliances and chassis shortages.

A process known as free flow, or peel off, is attracting favorable reviews from terminal operators as well as truckers in Los Angeles-Long Beach. Though still considered to be in its infancy since it was launched in early 2014, the ports are confident enough about the potential of peel off that they are identifying parcels of land in the harbor area that can be used to expand the program.

If other ports reduced harmful diesel emissions by as much as 90 percent since 2005 like Los Angeles and Long Beach have, many of them would say enough already and would be happy with their accomplishments. The Southern California ports, however, are planning ahead for even stricter emissions goals for 2023 and beyond.

West Coast ports rode a wave of Asian imports in August to take back market share they had lost to East Coast ports during the year-long labor issues associated with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union contract negotiations.

The Port of Long Beach announcement last week that the $93 million Green Port Gateway rail project had been completed was yet another step forward in a multi-year effort by the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to invest well over $1 billion to expand rail infrastructure at the largest U.S. port complex.

Harbor truckers in Los Angeles-Long Beach continue to experience long delays at the ports, but statistics released Wednesday by the Harbor Trucking Association show that the worst delays are not spent waiting in long lines at the terminal gates, but rather inside the terminals.

﻿Hong Kong to Los Angeles has long been known as one of the most dominant port pairings in the container trade, connecting the trade’s two largest national players, the United States and China, but what has been happening on the trade recently?

Harbor truckers in Los Angeles-Long Beach sincerely want terminal operators to succeed in their ground-breaking plan to develop a system of appointments throughout the harbor. But they fear that the logistics involved in coordinating as many as a dozen stand-alone trucker appointment systems will be very difficult to arrange.